In the past decade, our concept of what conditions are compatible with life, have changed significantly. The earlier, anthropocentric view of nature has limited our capacity to access new microbes and their genomes, but the discovery that almost all environments on earth and even the subsurface (more than 4 km), or subzero temperatures and high levels of radiation are likely to contain specially adapted life forms, has made the notion to understand the microbial biodiversity very important.
One of the most amazing features of the microbial world is that even the most toxic and apparently recalcitrant of substances developed by (chemical) industry over the decades usually prove to be degradable by one micro-organism or another. Microorganisms can encounter a large variety of chemicals such as metals in contaminated environments, thus it is not surprising that they would interact with these metals (Nies and Sliver, 1995).
U (VI) resistant bacteria isolated from contaminated environments have been shown to possess the ability to successfully remove toxic U (VI) from the environment by either reduction (generally by bacteria) or biosorption (usually by fungi) (van Heerden et al., 2008).
Recently, the microbial reduction of metals has attracted interest as these transformations can play crucial roles in the cycling of both inorganic and organic species and therefore have opened up new and exciting areas of research with potential practical application (Anderson et al., 1998; Rooney-Varga et al., 1999; Lovley and Lloyd, 2000; Anderson et al., 2003; Lovley et al., 2004). Dissimilatory metal reducing bacteria (DMRB) have been shown to gain energy to support anaerobic growth by coupling the oxidation of H2 or organic matter to the reduction of a variety of multivalent metals. This metabolism can lead to the complete mineralization of organic matter or to the precipitation and immobilization of metal contaminants under anaerobic conditions (Sani et al., 2002).
For the bioremediation of uranium contaminated sites, the chemistry of the element offers an approach that has received much attention in the last 20 years. The oxidation state of uranium is crucial to its stability, mobility and bioavailability. The oxidized or hexavalent, (VI), state of uranium is highly soluble and therefore mobile, while the reduced or tetravalent, (IV), state is relatively insoluble. In waste, uranium is present primarily as soluble salts of the uranyl ion (UO22+). When the uranyl ion is reduced from the U (VI) oxidation state to a lower oxidation state such as U (IV), the solubility decreases and it becomes immobilized.
The list of bacteria known in the art to reduce U (VI) is growing. When Thermus scotoductus SA-01 is incubated anaerobically with U (VI), U (VI) will precipitate out of solution indicating that Thermus scotoductus SA-01 has the ability to reduce U (VI). Studies have also shown that Thermus scotoductus SA-01 has the ability to reduce almost 100% of a 0.25 mM U (VI) solution under anaerobic conditions with lactate as an electron donor in less than 30 hours (van Heerden et al., 2008).
However, very little is known about the mechanisms involved in U (VI) reduction and the proteins involved in these mechanisms and accordingly conclusive evidence as to which protein(s) are responsible for uranium reduction is still lacking.
For purposes of the present specification, “polypeptide” is understood as meaning peptides or proteins which comprise two or more amino acids bonded via peptide bonds.